Walking the Hedge

I wasn’t raised in a normal family. I wasn’t raised to be normal.I wasn’t raised in the church. I wasn’t raised to conform. I wasn’t taught that women should be demure, modest, and wholesome.

I wasn’t raised to wear the same clothes as every one else. I wasn’t raised to drive the same kind of mini-van as everyone else. I was not raised to be a sheep-person.

I was encouraged to wear socks that don’t match if that makes me happy; I was allowed to wear PJs out in public if I wanted to. I was allowed to dye my hair purple and go to school in a tutu.

Now look, I know that most people from white bread, middle class, Christian upbringings think that any parent who would wear a Motorhead T-shirt or who takes the kids to a Grateful Dead concert is some low-life.

Wrong.

I was also raised to be hard working, not never expect anything to be handed to me. I was raised to be grateful for what I had and to not place too much value on material objects. I was raised that family and people matter more than social status or fancy things.

I was raised to help others. I was signed up to volunteer from an early age, everything from candy stripping to sporting events. We would go shopping to buy toys to donate every year, even when times were tough for us.

I was taught to be honest and to “do my own time for my own crime” to take responsibility for my actions. I was taught you can do anything you want, but you’re the one paying for it, because it’s not fair to hurt others along the way.

I was raised to be courageous and to stand up for what I believe in.

My blue-collar father took me to New Age coffee shops as a child because he knew I liked stuff like that. I was taken to the speaker’s corner at the park and allowed to listen to the people standing on soapboxes rant about the environment and politics or whatever.

I was raised to believe that being true to yourself is more important than fitting in.

And these are all thing that matter to me. They are who I am.

Now, there are things I disagree with. Education and financial security were not something encouraged or taught to be important in my family. I know this to be wrong.

I know there is a balance between being an individual and being a freaking weirdo.

Just because hippies and bikers and eccentrics raised me doesn’t mean that I don’t want a stable life, that I don’t have good values or morals.

It doesn’t mean that I can’t hold down a job or pay the bills, or keep a clean house.
It doesn’t mean that I’d be the kind of person who would leave the kids with a babysitter night after night to go concerts and act like a teenager.

I just means that I am not going to do things just because that’s the way everyone else does them.
It means I will be the Mom in the jean jacket with feathers and beads in her hair, and not a conservative sweater vest, at the kid’s baseball game.
It means I will always speak my mind, or keep quiet, but I won’t pretend to agree when I don’t.
I will always vote Green, even if it’s throwing my vote away.

It means I don’t want to be “normal”

I don’t want a pink stucco house in the suburbs, a station wagon parked out front and perfectly groomed kids playing in the house when they should be getting muddy in the yard.

I want to be able to place odd folk art I have made in my yard. I want to be able to wear a purple woolen poncho I crocheted myself out to dinner if I feel like it. I like my silly hats. I like my socks that don’t match.

I like being a poet who almost never uses rhyme or meter.

You can be a non-conformist and not be crazy or irresponsible.

I can do all those normal, ordinary, typical things.

I just want to be able to do them in my own unique way.